Jack of All Trades (Signed and Inscribed Association copy)

Not dated but c1950. First edition, first printing (true first). Signed and inscribed by Frank Richards, to Edith Hood, on half title page. Frank Richards was one of several pen names of Charles Hamilton. Hamilton first met Edith Hood in 1914 when he stayed in rooms above the post office in the Kent village of Hawkinge – Edith was a play friend of the post mistress’s daughter but she served as his housekeeper and close confident from the early 1930s until Hamilton’s death in 1961. Hood continued to live in Hamilton’s cottage, Rose Lawn, in Kingsgate in Kent, for many years after his death until she moved into a nursing home in Broadstairs in 1980. Green cloth boards (a couple of mild marks and cloth rounded at spine tips) in period pictorial dust jacket (very slight rubbing at extremities, small closed nick at base). Now protected in archival quality mylar wrapper. Occasional spotting on text block edge, strip of toning on endpapers. From the author of the Billy Bunter books (who wrote under a number of pen names), the Jack Nobody series of books was introduced in 1950 as the author switched his concentration from writing for magazines to books.

Jack Nobody, Signed Books, charles hamilton